Robert Watson Munford (June 22, 1925 – May 28, 1991) was an American artist, educator, and founding member of the artist group Grupo Ibiza 59 in Spain. His artwork is in the permanent collections of the

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is an art museum beside the National Mall, in Washington, D.C., the United States. The museum was initially endowed during the 1960s with the permanent art collection of Joseph H. Hirshhorn. It was desig ...

(

Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered o ...

, DC), the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

(New York), and the Städtische Galerie Wolfsburg (Germany). He was a pop art pioneer.

Biography

Early life and career

Munford was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, on June 22, 1925, to Camille Watson Munford and Walter F. Munford, president of the

United States Steel Corporation United States Steel Corporation, more commonly known as U.S. Steel, is an American integrated steel producer headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with production operations primarily in the United States of America and in several countries ...

. He attended

Worcester Academy Worcester Academy is a private school in Worcester, Massachusetts. It is the oldest educational institution founded in the city of Worcester, Massachusetts, and one of the oldest day-boarding schools in the United States. A coeducational prepara ...

(Worcester, Massachusetts) and later joined the U.S. Army Air Corps during the Second World War. Munford decided to pursue a career in art and following the war, he studied in a number of places including Ohio State University (1946–1947), the Cleveland Institute of Art (1947–1949), the University of Bellas Artes, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico (1947), and the Art Students League of New York (1949–1951). Around 1951, he relocated to

Provincetown, Massachusetts Provincetown is a New England town located at the extreme tip of Cape Cod in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, in the United States. A small coastal resort town with a year-round population of 3,664 as of the 2020 United States Census, Provincet ...

. While there, Munford exhibited at the Sun Gallery and the Babcock Gallery in New York City. He also worked as a freelance illustrator for ''Fortune Magazine'', ''Esquire'', and ''Harper's Magazine''.

Europe

In 1956, Munford moved to the Balearic Islands in Spain, first to the island of Formentera and subsequently to the island of Ibiza. From 1957 to 1966, he resided in the Ibizan town of Santa Eulària. At that time, Ibiza was home to a colony of artists, writers, and expatriates predominantly from Europe and North America. While on Ibiza, Munford helped found Grupo Ibiza 59, an artist group that included Erwin Bechtold, Erwin Broner, Hans Laabs, Katja Meirowsky, Egon Neubauer, Antonio Ruiz, Bertil Sjöberg, and

Heinz Trökes Heinz Trökes (15 August 1913 – 22 April 1997) was a German painter, printmaker and art teacher. Biography Trökes was born in Duisburg. After completing his ''Abitur'' (school leaving examination) in 1933, Trökes was a pupil of Johanne ...

. The Spanish sculptor Carlos Sansegundo and African-American painter Bob Thompson later joined the group. Prior to 1957, Munford had painted in an abstract expressionist style. His work, ''La Vigie'', featured in Munford's 1960 Paris show at the Galerie Lara Vincy, is an example of this period of production. Between the years 1957 and 1964, Munford, in a series of

gouache Gouache (; ), body color, or opaque watercolor is a water-medium paint consisting of natural pigment, water, a binding agent (usually gum arabic or dextrin), and sometimes additional inert material. Gouache is designed to be opaque. Gouache h ...

and

oil paintings Oil painting is the process of painting with pigments with a medium of drying oil as the binder. It has been the most common technique for artistic painting on wood panel or canvas for several centuries, spreading from Europe to the rest of ...

, moved towards a distinctive proto-pop style, his work of this period now being characterized by the use of cloudy atmospheres, silhouetted figures, and pop art elements, such as handwriting, numbers, diagrams, repetitive stamped images, and photographic transfers. Examples of this style can be seen in ''Hocus Pocus'' (1961), ''And Then There Were None'' (1964) and ''Pedigree'' (1963). Munford's work was exhibited throughout Europe in such venues as Galerie Lara Vincy (Paris), Salon des Réalités Nouvelles (Paris), Galerie Brusberg (Hannover, Germany), Galerie Springer (Berlin),

Leicester Galleries Leicester Galleries was an art gallery located in London from 1902 to 1977 that held exhibitions of modern British, French and international artists' works. Its name was acquired in 1984 by Peter Nahum, who operates "Peter Nahum at the Leiceste ...

(London), Galeria Ivan Spence (Ibiza), and Galerie Handschin (Basel). In the 1963 Paris edition of the ''New York Herald Tribune'', then art critic John Ashbery reviewed Munford's Galerie Lara Vincy show, citing Munford as an early pop art practitioner. In his book ''New Tendencies in Art'' (1966), the critic Aldo Pellegrini classified Munford as part of a group of "neo-figurative artists" whose work blended pop art imagery. Pellegrini listed

Larry Rivers Larry Rivers (born Yitzroch Loiza Grossberg) (1923 – 2002) was an American artist, musician, filmmaker, and occasional actor. Considered by many scholars to be the "Godfather" and "Grandfather" of Pop art, he was one of the first artists ...

, R.B. Kitaj,

Peter Saul Peter Saul (born August 16, 1934) is an American painter. His work has connections with Pop Art, Surrealism, and Expressionism. His early use of pop culture cartoon references in the late 1950s and very early 1960s situates him as one of the fa ...

, and Harold Stevenson among Munford's stylistic contemporaries. From 1962 to 1965, Munford was involved with the Druckwerkstatt art school at the Schloss Wolfsburg (

Wolfsburg Wolfsburg (; Eastphalian: ''Wulfsborg'') is the fifth largest city in the German state of Lower Saxony, located on the river Aller. It lies about east of Hanover and west of Berlin. Wolfsburg is famous as the location of Volkswagen AG's hea ...

, Germany). While at the Druckwerkstatt, Munford lectured on

lithography Lithography () is a planographic method of printing originally based on the immiscibility of oil and water. The printing is from a stone (lithographic limestone) or a metal plate with a smooth surface. It was invented in 1796 by the German a ...

and created a series of lithographs in his distinct proto-pop style. The

(New York) owns a lithograph from the Druckwerkstatt series.

New York

In 1966, Munford returned to the United States to work in New York City. Between 1968 and 1970, Munford designed stage sets for the Michael Abrams Gothic Art Theater, the

Brooklyn Academy of Music The Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) is a performing arts venue in Brooklyn, New York City, known as a center for progressive and avant-garde performance. It presented its first performance in 1861 and began operations in its present location in ...

, the Elliot Feld American Ballet Company, and the

New York City Center New York City Center (previously known as the Mecca Temple, City Center of Music and Drama,. The name "City Center for Music and Drama Inc." is the organizational parent of the New York City Ballet and, until 2011, the New York City Opera. and th ...

. In 1970, he was commissioned by Great American Editions to create a series of silkscreen prints depicting circus scenes. From 1970 to 1971, these images were exhibited in several locations, including Carlow College (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania), the Westmoreland Museum (Greensburg, Pennsylvania), the Sunrise Museum (Charleston, West Virginia), the National Art Museum of Sport, Madison Square Garden (New York), and the Parrish Art Museum (Southampton, New York). In 1971, Munford joined the art faculty of the

Long Island University Long Island University (LIU) is a private university with two main campuses, LIU Post and LIU Brooklyn, in the U.S. state of New York. It offers more than 500 academic programs at its main campuses, online, and at multiple non-residential. LIU ...

, Southampton Campus, where he taught art for the next twenty years. Munford died on May 28, 1991, in Water Mill, Long Island, New York.

Notes

References

* Ashbery, J. (1963, December 18). "What's Happened to Chauvinism". ''The New York Herald Tribune'', p. 6. * ''Grupo Ibiza 59: Passat i Present''. (1992). Eivissa (Ibiza): Museu d'Art Contemporani d'Eivissa. Exhibition catalog. * Galerie Brusberg. ''Robert Munford''. (1964). Hannover, Germany: Galerie Brusberg. Exhibition catalog. * Galerie Brusberg. ''Robert W. Munford, Bilder und Gouachen''. (1962). Hannover, Germany: Galerie Brusberg. Exhibition catalog. * Galerie Lara Vincy. ''Munford''. (1960). Paris: Galerie Lara Vincy. Exhibition catalog. * Long Island University, Southampton Campus. ''Sabbatical Exhibition: Robert W. Munford'', September 8 -October 4, 1998. (1998). Southampton, NY: Long Island University, Southampton Campus. Exhibition catalog. * Museu d'Art Contemporani d'Eivissa. ''Eivissa, Anys 60: El Naixement de Babel'': xposicio al M.A.C., Estiu de 1998 (1998). Eivissa (Ibiza): Museu d'Art Contemporani d'Eivissa. Exhibition catalog. * Pellegrini, A. (1966). ''New Tendencies in Art''. New York: Crown Publishers. * Sansegundo, S. (1991, August 6). '"Obituaries: Robert Munford". ''The East Hampton Star''. * Städtische Galerie Wolfsburg. ''Druck – 50 Jahre Druckwerkstatt im Schloss Wolfsburg''. (2011). Wolfsburg, Germany: Städtische Galerie Wolfsburg. Exhibition catalog.

External links

* Robert Munford Catalogue Raisonné (http://www.robertmunfordcatalogue.org). (Dead) * Robert Munford Catalogue Raisonné (Memento from 2019) (https://web.archive.org/web/20190124065324/http://www.robertmunfordcatalogue.org/) (Internet-Archives) {{DEFAULTSORT:Munford, Robert 20th-century American painters American male painters 1925 births 1991 deaths People from Ibiza Artists from Worcester, Massachusetts Painters from Massachusetts American expatriates in Spain United States Army Air Forces personnel of World War II American pop artists Ohio State University alumni Cleveland Institute of Art alumni Art Students League of New York alumni American magazine illustrators Long Island University faculty 20th-century American printmakers 20th-century American male artists